Explore 25 northern war cemeteries

Beach Cemetery

Beach Cemetery (391 burials) is a curved plot 80m in length just above the point
of Hell Spit facing the sea and was used throughout the occupation.

This is among the best known and most famous of the Anzac cemeteries, possibly because here is the grave of the best known of all the Anzac soldiers  Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, 3rd Field Ambulance (plot I, row F, grave 1).

After seeing Simpsons grave, Sir Roden Cutler VC remarked:

I looked down and found myself standing at the grave of Simpson, the man with the donkey. It is a moment I will take to my grave.

Grave of John Simpson Kirkpatrick – served as 202 Private J. Simpson, Aust. Army Medical Corps – 19 May 1915 age 22: ‘He gave his life that others may live’.

The cemetery was in use from 25 April 1915 and contains 285
Australians, 49 British, 21 New Zealanders, three soldiers from the
Ceylon Tea Planters contingent and 21 unknowns. The Ceylonese
Tea Planters numbered about 80 on Gallipoli and they were used
by the Anzac Corps Commander, General William Birdwood, as his
personal escort and camp guard.

A view of the walled cross at Beach Cemetery. Sir John Burnet’s designs for the Gallipoli Cemeteries differ from those of the Western Front in the use of walled crosses rather than the free-standing Cross of Sacrifice.

Cater was a familiar
figure to the Anzacs as he was in charge of the landings at Anzac
Cove. He won the respect of all for his cool disregard of the enemy
shell fire which raked the beach while he assisted others. The story
goes that Cater wore a very large monocle and that a group of Australians
sought to get a rise out of him by approaching him with their identity
discs in their eye. Cater responded by throwing his monocle in the
air, catching it in his eye and saying Do that, you blighters!
He was killed by a shell on 7 August 1915.

Colonel Clarke landed with elements of his battalion at North Beach
on 25 April 1915. He led them off the beach up the heights beside the
Sphinx, amazing many with his fitness:

Odd parties of the 11th and 12th Battalions
were scrambling up these gravelly and almost perpendicular crags
by any foothold which offered One of this party, Corporal
E W D Laing clambering breathless up the height, came
upon an officer almost exhausted half way up. It was the old
Colonel - Clarke of the 12th Battalion. He was carrying
his heavy pack, and could scarcely go further. Laing advised
him to throw the pack away, but Clarke was unwilling to lose
it, and Laing thereupon carried it himself. [Laing and another officer, Margetts, then climbed slowly on until ...] Margetts,
reaching the top, found to his astonishment the Colonel already
there.

[C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Sydney, 1924, Vol 1, p.272.]

Clarke was killed later in the day. At age 57, he was possible the oldest Australian to die at the landing.

The cemetery, designed by Sir John Burnet, principal architect of the CWGC cemeteries and memorials on the peninsula, is under the control of the CWGC It was registered as a cultural heritage site by the Turkish Ministry of Culture on 14 November, 1980.